Pinhole Portraits

the Concept

    Welcome to the gallery of pinhole portraits! These photographs are my most recent step in a journey that started in August 2005, when I first had the idea to create a pinhole camera that could fit in my vagina. They were featured at my senior show, which ran Feb. 18-24, 2006 in Fisher Hall at Oberlin College.

    I deal with many issues in this project, including those complex relationships of power between the camera, the photographer, the subject, and the audience members who, consciously or inadvertently, will be at once supposedly-objective viewers and at the same time invited to identify with the camera (and my vagina) in order to make sense of the image. In all of these relationships, the traditionally understood power dynamics between any given roles (of photographer and subject, photographer and camera, subject and viewer, viewer and camera, subject and camera, etc.) can be inverted easily, and in many cases they resist and confound binary classification.

    Another important aspect of this work is the attention it calls to my body, which currently resides in that liminal space between male and female. What does it mean for a person who looks like a man to have a vagina, and how does that reality affect his gendered relationships with other people – including the other people who are subjects in his portraits, observers at his art show, and strangers he passes on the street?

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the Process

    My pinhole cameras are made of cylindrical black plastic film boxes, small pieces of aluminum can (for the pinhole lenses and the shutters), rubber rings (to hold the negatives in place), and black electrical tape (which works both to seal out light and to hold things together). I cut my 35mm film with a steel hole punch, which I hit with a mallet in complete darkness. I collect the circular negative pieces in another film box, and I keep a third box for the exposed negatives. In the studio, the exposure is determined by a strobe flash system – not by the shutter on the camera – which allows me much more freedom and spontaneity.

    It has been an intense experience for me, as a person who does not identify as female, to be drawing attention to my anatomy in this way, but it has also been really rewarding. As I let my guard down and relinquish much of the control photographers typically have over their images, I am empowering my subjects to determine how they want to be visually represented. Each photo shoot has taken about half an hour, and, during each session, we have had some really amazing conversations. Amazing perhaps because the level of trust I put in the models is very high, and they probably feel they can reciprocate more easily than if I were hiding fully clothed behind a traditional external camera.

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the Portraits

These are the portraits I exhibited in my senior show.

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the Testimonies

    I have taken portraits of 30 people. Some of them are represented visually in this show. I gave everyone the opportunity to write a little bit about their experience being photographed, so here are the statements I have received so far. It is impossible for me to fully describe what I'm trying to do with this pinhole project, and each of these responses helps to illuminate its purpose, scope, and impact.

    i like melsen. i'm glad i got to talk to him.

    I was really excited about melsen's project from the beginning. I knew right away that I wanted to be a part of it, but I was too shy to approach him. At first I was thinking about this through my whole gender and women's studies analysis – what does it mean for a nude body to be the lens and not the object of the gaze, especially a trans body? It turns power dynamics on their head. And, of course, this is one of the big questions that this project forces the viewer to consider, but the actual experience of being photographed brought so much more to the table. I expected to be uncomfortable: I don't know melsen or his vagina that well, and I'm pretty nervous around cameras in general. But the whole thing was very relaxed. It was intimate, for sure, but it also seemed totally natural, we talked about unrelated (and related) things; it was as if we were just hanging out.

    I am looking at the photographs of everyone on the website, trying to imagine which shots you're going to choose. It's going to be beautiful. Thinking about all the photographs together, it seems also an ode to community, to how you see others, to other people's comfort with you. When I was photographed, there was a so much more of a personal element that wasn't directly related to all the really heady gender studies stuff all the time.

    What I appreciate most about this project is the way that everyone is involved. It is not just about Melsen, it is not just about transgender identity and transgender bodies and the gaze (although it is about these things too), but it's also about how we see each other and what shapes our perception of the world.

    I appreciate that there's a website of melsen's work out there that someone somewhere far away might stumble upon. I appreciate that, when I was photographed, I had to direct the aim of the camera. I appreciate that we are all reflecting on this experience as both subjects of a photo shoot and participants in this project.

    Having seen a lot of Melsen's work in the past, the sight of his unique new camera apparatus was not shocking to me. I think that many of the models, including myself, were in denial of the provoked intimacy of the shoot. As someone who is attracted to Melsen both as a photographer and a person, there was a desire to respect the professionalism that runs all his art work, as well as a desire to get closer, be curious and create more tension. It was hard to tell what Melsen wanted, and perhaps he did not know either... My own calmness surprised me. I saw no reason to over-react and I let myself be carried by the moment. The laisser-aller mood set by Melsen was so different from the demands I believe he places on himself when working on self-portraits. I remember being worried after the shoot that the pictures would come out visualizing something less significant than what it actually was. Perhaps it has been a long time since Melsen has photographed other people and this may have contributed to his decisions not to direct the models and orchestrate our potential reactions to convey more decisive expressions.

when then is the right time to look, and then think of when you go out to see the nudes, or
even fancier the
self-portrait of himself painting the nude, and then when the nude is ... what's behind the
camera ... when
that's a question or a statement and then will you smile, when will you grin, when there's
lightning but the
camera doesn't click and if he has to sit will you stand, no, we're doing each other a favor.
and then when is the
right time to look away, and what's on the walls but wrinkled fabric and then will you just go
eat lunch and
when you do then how will you look at people, feet first head first breast first stomach first
and when is it just
about things that face out, and how far will you lean to get the right look and how much will
they let you when
they know you're looking. and who's doing who the favor then when you look away and the
flash goes off and
when who's the one still dressed when the blinking is over. if you're behind a camera but
your legs are in front
then where are you, with a friend in the other room and outside there's snow and then you
get concerned about
the photographer – it's a little cold, and no one's telling you what to do, it shouldn't be hard.

    Walking into the photoshoot I thought more about the logistics of the process itself than what my role would be in getting my picture taken. I agreed to the request because I respect melsen and his photography and was honored that I would get an inside look at what exactly he was doing. The experience was incredibly similar to what my previous experiences had been viewing melsen's photographs, not only this series but also photographs from previous years that dealt with the same subject matter in different ways. I was shy, curious and not entirely sure how to act as the viewer or rather this time as the subject. Melsen as a photographer acted exactly as his photographs do. Very honest, comfortable and open while confronting you with a multitude of questions without answers. It's this quality about the photographs and Melsen as a photographer that showed through so clearly during the shoot– the ability to reveal and confront so sensitively.

    My relationship with my own genitalia is so contested that it was really good to be a part of this work. I really like my cunt and I can't stand it, sometimes at the same time. I can't lie. I would really like a fully functioning penis, but at the same time I don't think I'd trade in my life as a trans person in order to be born cisgendered, even if I got a dick as part of the bargain. There are times when I really like being a man with a cunt, when I have no problem using it, but I don't think those times are any more radical than when I really fucking want a cock. They're just different.

    So when Melsen took off his pants, I really felt like I should too. He said I could, but I decided not to – not because of modesty or dysphoria exactly, but because I didn't want to mess with his vision of the pictures and their continuity, and I got the sense that most other people would be clothed.

    I'm not sure what I'd expected when I came in to have my picture taken, but it wasn't what happened. Melsen had me sit on a raised platform and the three of us laughed as he asked me to tell him if the camera was pointing at my head – his partner, who's a good friend of mine, was there too. I'd been around before when Melsen had taken pictures from his vagina, but it was of a fruit with testosterone syringes in it, so the process wasn't new to me, but having my own picture taken that way was.

    What I really wanted to do was show visually what it is for me to be trans, and the main way I thought to do that was to take my shirt off and strip away the façade – to show that I was wearing a binder on my chest to flatten out my breasts. I was conflicted about that, though – what does it say, exactly? That trans people are fakers, hiding our deviant bodies under our clothes? That's not why I bind, but I can see someone taking that message away from it. I want to be open and respected as a deviant, while at the same time respected for the fact that I'd really rather not reclaim my breasts as male body parts and have my boobs hanging out most of the time, thank you very much. As a man, my body is by definition male, but at the same time there are some parts of it I'd really rather be male in a different, more conventional way.

    My choice to strip down to my binder is also complicated by the fact that when the pictures were taken, I wasn't actually binding all that often. Maybe I only wearing it as that clichéd visual marker of transness, like the person deciding between two binary bathroom signs? At the same time, I recognize that visual symbols are powerful when they represent real things, because they give people immediate context. Even while I roll my eyes at how many times I've seen that bathroom image before, at the same time it is moving, precisely because it's so recognizable. I have felt the pain of being in that exact situation, of knowing neither the women's nor the men's bathroom can contain all of me, not to mention that I'm probably not welcome and possibly in danger in both of them besides.

    So since I figured Melsen wouldn't be putting a big "tranny" sign over the heads of those of us he photographed who are, in fact, transgendered, it was important to me to mark myself that way. I wanted to locate myself not just as someone being photographed by a boy's vagina (though I know Melsen has issues with defining himself as a Capital B Boy), but as one man with a cunt being photographed by another. I wanted to make that power dynamic of one man exposed and physically transitioned, one man not so exposed and in his birth body more explicit, to make clear that we were both extremely vulnerable and in each other's hands.

    It is was an honor to be photographed by you after having known you in my photo class first as Melissa and to watch the gradual coming together of your life psychically, emotionally and creatively. I am proud to be a part of the initial conversation of the vagina cam and to see you follow your commitment to the finish line. I remember the wednesday night group and the women's suggestion of how you could actually execute your idea. So I was thrilled to be asked by you to have my portrait taken. The idea is weird but we thrive on your weirdness and we are always inspired by it. I found the session to be comforting to be enclosed in your make shift studio, and since I was not facing the camera, I anticipated by listening to the burst of the flash. I was your mentor before the portrait and afterwards we became colleagues.

    Fear of knowing cradled in trust and acceptance – That's how I would characterize my experience of being photographed by Melsen and his vagina. There is so much left to know about my own gender and mostly I am afraid to ask. But, lighted up by the flash of Melsen's camera equipment, under a tent-like white sheet, I felt cradled. You are who you are, and you are where you are...

    I've known Melsen ever since my first semester at Oberlin three years ago, when we took a photography class together. Since then we have taken other photo classes together, and I've seen most of his photos from the time we first met until now. In the past, the majority of his images were self portraits, so part of the way I think about Melsen is as a photographic subject.

    When Melsen asked to photograph me, it seemed perfectly natural, and I was excited about being more closely involved with his work. I never felt uncomfortable with the situation, although certainly being photographed by a camera inserted into someone else's vagina doesn't happen everyday. Most people have their own ways that they respond to someone taking their picture. They try to get out of the way or they try to hide as much of themselves as possible or they try to look sexy or whatever. So part of the experience was just recognizing more explicitly how I generally react to being photographed and how that changed with Melsen. I'm usually somewhat self-conscious when someone takes my picture, and I generally try not to look stupid. But for some reason, when Melsen photographed me, I was more comfortable than I have been since I was a child. A photographer is almost always a voyer in some sense, and has some kind of power over the subject - the power to expose flaws and moments of unawarness. But Melsen was as vulnerable as his subjects when he took their picture - photographer and subject were on an equal plane. For me, there was a sense of mutual and unconditional acceptance. We were both voyeurs and we were both exposed, but there was no exploitation.

    If I could be photographed by Melsen again, I think I would have taken my shirt off and sat there topless for his eyes and his camera and his vagina to see. I don't like my breasts lately, at all. I feel very disconnected from them, like they're not part of my body, they're some attachment or growth, warts, moles. Most mornings, I dream of a flat chest as I get dressed in the mirror, imagine the way my torso would look and feel in a t-shirt without a bra or a binder or these breasts underneath, fantasize about walking around topless, having the wind play over my pecs and no weight pulling me down.

    I am not transgender. I thought I might be when I got to Oberlin, not because I felt like I should have been born a boy, but because of this intense dislike for my own breasts. I didn't know anyone else who felt that way, who hated her female torso sometimes, who wanted to flatten her breasts to make them invisible; and more than that, who didn't want to have to bind them down, who just didn't want them there at all. When I came to Oberlin I quickly realized that this does not make me trans. So now I am in this state that is perhaps confusing and difficult for anyone else to understand – and I am still struggling with it on a daily basis: I identify as female, but I don't want breasts; and I will never get them removed.

    I couldn't begin to guess how Melsen feels about his vagina, but I think that by exposing to him the part of myself that I am most uncomfortable with, the part that I try to hide from people every day; and that I myself am constantly trying to ignore, Melsen and I could have had an interesting dialogue about the way we feel about our bodies, and so many of these feelings could have been captured on film. If I had taken my shirt off for these photographs, I would have felt petrified and uncomfortable and trusting and proud and embarrassed and nervous and shy and excited. It would have been an experience of growth for me.

    Instead I sat with three layers of shirts on over my bra, not wanting to look or know, not wanting to ask questions or hear answers, not wanting to expose myself or my insecurities. If I could do it over again I would take my shirt off and sit there and ask him, Melsen, what do I do? What do I do?